Lisa Hendricks was frustrated.  As a mother of three and successful entrepreneur in Daytona, Fla., she always found herself strapped for time.  Like many of us, she’d often fall prey to the distractions of the day, only to realize when she returned home that she forgot to pick up those few critical grocery items on the way.  It was, Lisa said, “A regularly aggravating occurrence.”

Lisa and her fiancé, Jack, purchased their first iPhones last spring and immediately began reaping the benefits of upgrading from a more basic handset.  Lisa used her iPhone to check email, browse the web and keep her contacts in order more effectively than on her old phone, but the feature that intrigued her most was the iPhone’s built-in GPS capabilities.  “I thought it was really cool seeing myself on the map going towards my destination,” Lisa said.  She also dove headfirst into the App Store.  In her first week with an iPhone, Lisa accounted for more than 50 of the over five billion apps that users have downloaded to Apple’s mobile platforms since the App Store launched in July 2008.

After using her iPhone for about a month, Lisa’s predilection for the gadget’s mapping capabilities, her frustration with forgetting errands and her voracious appetite for new mobile apps collided in the form of a simple idea: Couldn’t an app be made that would let users easily build a shopping list and then remind them when they were passing by a store?  She told Jack about her idea, and he agreed that such an app would be useful.  Lisa browsed through the App Store, and was surprised to find that, even though there were more than 150,000 apps available, none of them seemed to accomplish this.

Convinced she was on to something, Lisa set out to find an app developer that could help bring her idea to life. “I am always looking for the chance to grow and improve. This just seemed like a great business opportunity, and I really like the idea of working with technology,” she said.  After a bit more research, Lisa discovered an app development studio in nearby Jacksonville and gave them a call.

“Oddly enough, I was visiting my parents in Orlando, out on their boat, feeding some wild goats that lived on a nearby island, when my phone first rang.  I was going to let it go to voicemail since it wasn’t a great time to take a business call, but I didn’t recognize the area code and was curious to see who it was,” said Casey Ayers, co-founder of MegatonApps.  “Lisa was wary to share many details over the phone, and we’ve run into plenty of individuals that think that they’ve come across the next big thing when it’s already been done.  I would be driving through Daytona on my way back to Jacksonville in a few days, though, so I decided to take a meeting and learn a bit more.”

Lisa and Jack met with Casey a few days later to share their idea.  Casey saw the potential, but unlike Lisa and Jack, was unsurprised that it hadn’t been attempted by anyone else to that point.  “Apple had just unveiled some of the new features that they’d be releasing in the fourth version of the iPhone’s operating system.  A couple of these features were absolutely essential for an app like this, especially the multitasking features,” explained Casey.  “In the past, an app like this would have to be left open constantly to work. Now, users can be alerted when passing by the store even if the app isn’t active.”

After several months of work designing and developing the app, Lisa’s dream is coming to life.  The app, called Easyminder, is available now for just $2.99 on the Apple App Store.  Users can easily add items to a list, and then tag that list to a geographic location.  A friendly reminder chime will sound when the user comes within a distance to the location they specify, ranging from 500 feet to 20 miles.  Users can even set a due date that syncs to the iPhone’s system calendar.  It’s easy to check off items, add new lists or save old lists to use again for items users pick up regularly. Users can also email lists to friends or family, a feature that Lisa wanted so she could send reminders to Jack.

“Working with Lisa and bringing her concept to life has been rewarding.  We’ve all had a spark of genius at some point, but few people have the persistence to follow through like she has,” said Casey.  “The best apps make people’s lives easier or a little more fun in a simple way.  We hope that’s what we’ve accomplished here.”

To purchase the app and learn more, click here.

Third-Party Development Tools

We actually supported Apple’s original decision to disallow the use of Flash as a development tool for iPhone apps.  While Steve Jobs’s open letter regarding Flash, published in April 2010, was filled with some of the bluster and absolutism that the CEO is famous for, he also made a few very reasonable points about the liability of allowing intermediary toolsets. Chief among them:

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

You can look at the iPhone 4’s Retina Display as one example of this.  Apps created using Apple’s Xcode toolset automatically benefitted in many ways from the dramatically enhanced resolution capability of the new iPhone’s display.  System toolbars, text, standard buttons, and more were automatically “up-rezed”.  Developers would still need to change any custom icons or other art in their apps using an update, but even this was a simple process for most non-game apps.  If an app is developed using a separate toolset, however, such as Flash or any other, Apple can’t ensure that apps will immediately benefit from new features they want to roll out in hardware or software.

For example, GameSalad is a great third-party development system for making iPhone games.  However, it does not currently support any multiplayer gaming, nor does it support Game Center from Apple.  Support for iAds were only recently added, and only to select paid tiers of GameSalad’s service.  These kind of complications will always be inherent to Apple’s secret development process, where they don’t provide many months’ worth of lead time on product announcements.

At the same time, we expect this announcement will help spur a new wave of development tools that make constructing apps that work for all of the major platforms, including Android, webOS and iOS, a lot easier.  Certainly, the reach of these apps will be limited to the portion of the “features” Venn Diagram that all of the platforms share, but for many non-specialized apps, this may be enough.  We still believe that the best results can be achieved by using the tools made specially for any particular platform, but can certainly envision scenarios where the benefits of cross-platform development far outweigh the loss of fidelity that comes with using more universal tools.

App Store Guidelines

This is a huge step, and helps to allay many of the concerns that we share with clients when discussing the risks of app development, and that we have previously shared regarding our experience with Multitaskers, our productivity toolkit for iPad. The reality is, many of these guidelines have been in place since the App Store was first opened. The problem has been that figuring out these guidelines has been a lot like walking across a minefield: by the time you discover there’s a problem, it’s probably too late.  Openly sharing their guidelines takes a lot of the roulette element out of the app development process. And while Apple retains the right to reject any app for any reason for publication to the App Store, having more concrete rules to live by provides a critical boost of confidence to app developers and companies and entrepreneurs that want to bring their product or service to iOS platforms.

We can’t mention these guidelines, of course, without noting the hilariously frank introduction session.  It’s easy to imagine Steve Jobs pacing back and forth, more than a bit irritated, as he dictated this passage word for word to an employee who wouldn’t dare change it.  Can you imagine Microsoft or Google stating the following as official company policy?:

We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps. If your app doesn’t do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.

There’s no doubt that developing for Apple platforms means having to cope with a very particular, and often mercurial, mentality.  But there’s also no doubt that this same mentality leads Apple to relentlessly create truly amazing hardware from which developers and users benefit.  If it’s now Apple’s intention to think the same way they always have, but simply communicate that more clearly and transparently to developers and customers, then great.  We may not always be happy with their thought process, but there will be little doubt that they act fairly, within the rules that they construct.

Advertising Support

We think iAd is a great platform for our clients to use if they choose to integrate advertising. The quality of the ads, as well as the money generated from them, appears to be head and shoulders above other platforms at the current time. But that doesn’t mean that iAd should be the exclusive choice out there; competition improves just about anything, and certainly advertising is included.  What we disliked most about the previous policy is how clearly it was meant to target AdMob, which was acquired by Google after Apple had reportedly bid on AdMob themselves.  The revised policy ensures that information collected by advertising protocols won’t compromise the privacy and security of end users while also providing developers with greater freedom of choice in their monetization solutions.

What This Means for the Platform and the Market

Why Apple would suddenly make so many drastic changes after such a prolonged outcry from developers and the public is far from clear.  Many have speculated that they were facing a challenge from the FTC or Department of Justice for anticompetitive practices, and that these changes may have been enough to appease the regulatory bodies.  We think this theory has a lot of merit.  Perhaps Apple finally decided to implement these changes of their own volition.  

In any case, there’s no doubt that these changes are an extremely positive sign for the future of iOS devices.  The biggest liability of iOS development up to now has not been the limits of the hardware, software restrictions placed on devices arbitrarily by individual wireless carriers, an incomplete development toolset or a small userbase.  In fact, Apple’s iPhone and iPad lead the market in each of these areas. The biggest liability has been the opaque nature of the final step to market: everything has been perfectly clear until the last moment, when the difference between a green light or a red light on a status page could mean the difference between months of work laid to waste and overnight success.

We believe that these steps toward liberating the development and approval process will help Apple to maintain the lead that their hardware and software superiority naturally afford them, and further strengthens our confidence that iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad will remain the premiere mobile app platforms for the foreseeable future.

The reality is that Apple’s mobile platforms all better meet the demands of mainstream gamers than Nintendo’s DS models. Apple’s devices are miles ahead of Nintendo’s when it comes to multifunctionality. It’s just not a fair fight to compare a DSi to an iPod Touch when it comes to web browsing, listening to music or accomplishing other, non-gaming tasks. The majority of the DSi’s new features were meant to answer these deficiencies, and they did so poorly. 

Nintendo must view Apple as a legitimate threat to its long-term primacy in the portable market, or face certain peril. As it stands, iPhone is a technically superior platform with a compelling user interface and an unbeaten software distribution system. It’s also vastly more capable for non-gaming tasks. The 3DS needs to not just be as compelling, but much more compelling than the forthcoming iPhone update in order to defend the crown.

This is the danger Nintendo accepted when choosing the “mainstream” road in this generation. While incredibly lucrative, the mainstream is also liable to jump off one bandwagon and onto another quickly. Apple currently holds all of the trump cards that Nintendo played just a few years back with their positioning of the DS and the Wii. To write off Apple in this market is just as deadly as it was to write them off in the music, phone and now eBook markets. Apple understands content, and has created devices that make exploring it a joyful experience. 

Whether Mr. Fils-Aime wants to admit it or not, every minute spent playing a game on an iPhone is one less minute with a Nintendo product. And by all accounts, time is running short.

“The difference between the two companies is that Apple has been fearless about transformational change while Microsoft has been reluctant to leave its past behind,” said Casey Ayers, president of MegatonApps in Jacksonville, Fla. His company soon will release its first iPad app, “Multitaskers” which includes a calculator, ruler, lantern, stopwatch and five more functions.

“Microsoft has always been loath to change and risk alienating some of its customers, but its inability to leave the past behind has left their product line bloated and dysfunctional,” Ayers said. “Yet iPhone completely changed the mobile space forever. Apple doesn’t blink at making unpopular decisions if it believes they will result in a better end product. … It’s just a matter of time now before Apple blows past Microsoft’s market cap.”

So while Apple cheered its opening weekend of iPad sales, what wish Microsoft should have made when it blew out its birthday candles Sunday?

“More than anything, Microsoft’s birthday wish should be for fearless leadership,” said app maker Ayers. “Without someone at the top who feels an urgency to constantly innovate in meaningful ways, Microsoft will shrink and become less relevant with each birthday to come.”

In this video feature, we talk about what designing quality iPhone experiences means by illustrating the issues with the recently-released Caesar’s Palace iPhone app and giving viewers an inside look at how MegatonApps designed a concept for CityCenter Las Vegas with these topics in mind.

Casey Ayers, President of MegatonApps, LLC, shares his thoughts on Apple’s impending Tablet announcement and why he believes it will replace the laptop’s current role for mainstream users, while the laptop continues to replace desktops at an even more rapid clip than before.

Casey Ayers, President of MegatonApps, LLC, shares his thoughts on how the iPhone has been transformed from a celebrity-status icon to a commonplace utility in just a few short years, and why that’s incredibly awesome. 

If we have a role model out there in the world of industrial design, it would be Apple’s Jony Ive. Ive spoke with Wired back in 2003 about designing the PowerMac G5, which features the iconic aluminum casing that has since been adopted by all of Apple’s computers except the regular Macbook.  He said:

“We wanted to get rid of anything other than what was absolutely essential, but you don’t see that effort. We kept going back to the beginning again and again. Do we need that part? Can we get it to perform the function of the other four parts?”

This is exactly the crux I found myself in yesterday when working on some concept designs for a major new project.  Unfortunately, I can’t talk much about the project itself, so I apologize in advance if I sound coy at times.  What I can tell you is that one part of this app includes the ability to access a variety of menus (the food kind).  The entire app is being designed using a horizontal aspect.  The issue I was dealing with was in deciding how best to make the menu navigable to users.

The Easy Part

At first this seems easy enough But then the pesky details get in the way.  In this case, the food items were listed in French, with English descriptions, and a need to also display the price.  Should all of this data be contained within a single cell from a group of cells that take up the whole of the screen? Or, should the descriptions appear one at a time to the right side whenever users select from a skinnier menu on the left that just shows the item names? I chose the first route, because it might not be readily apparent to many users that tapping on each food item would cause the description to appear.  Further, for the side menu to scroll correctly while also showing the information we need to stay at the top, this single screen would have three different panes.

After deciding that all item information should appear in the same cell, the next question arrived: How should long food names be handled?  There were three options here. One was to have item names simply cut off after a set number of characters, to be followed with a “…” ellipsis (shown in the first line below.) The next would be to resize the text to get smaller as words got longer, in order to fit it all within a set amount of space (shown in line two below.)  The third option was to allow for multiple lines within the cell (line three below.)

The answer in this case was blessedly obvious after trying each out. In some cases, we don’t like using multiple lines in cells, because it constrains the number of choices you can show on screen at any point in time. Indeed, it’s possible that items with very long descriptions might take up the entire screen at once.  However, the importance of the information, in this case, dictates how the items must be handled.

The Hard Part

In a different area on this same screen, I needed to create a way to sort various menu items.  Users needed to be able to easily switch which area of the menu they were viewing, from appetizers to entrées and desserts.  In all, we had at least five of these sections, with the possible addition of a drinks and kids’ menus.  We tried a number of options out.

Segmented Control

The first option was a segmented control. The benefit here is that there is a visible color difference between the selected tab and the rest of them, while still showing all of the options at once.  The issue here is that it didn’t particularly look good as part of the overall screen. It also was limited in the options it could offer, even while in the horizontal iPhone view.

Bordered Bar

Using a background bar with embedded “round rect” buttons definitely looked better. However, this limited the button real estate even more. Even these five buttons only fit on the screen when cheating slightly by having a few of the pixels on each side bleed off of the screen. The worst part, and the dealbreaker, was that the round rect buttons don’t offer a simple method of changing color, so it would be difficult to indicate which screen a user was currently viewing. To solve this, we’d need an additional title listed below.

A further issue with both of the above options is that they didn’t account for whether the menu was for breakfast, lunch or dinner; in several cases, we would need these different menu types to be accessible.  Either a second bar would have to be placed under the first, which would create touch errors for many users due to the close proximity, or a pre-screen would have to be created, where users selected their menu type before accessing this screen.

We have two key mantras when faced with a situation like this: 1) Keep it all on the screen without crowding the interface. 2) The less taps, the better.  This led us to the solution.

Drop Down Menus

It sounds simple, right? I agree. That’s how I knew that it was the right answer.  It really is as Jony Ive says: users never see the effort required to distill an idea down to its barest and purest form.

The drop downs will activate “pickers”, which are the spinning menus that often appear when filling out a form and choosing from a pool of selections, like what state the user lives in.  In this case, users can pick not just which portion of the menu they’d like to view, but also which meal menu they want that information to come from. This works out because the drop down menus, of course, continue to display the currently selected option.

Final Thoughts

The difference between an app well made and an app made quickly is the amount of thought put into the small parts of the UI, like what is shown above.  That’s what makes me proud of Megaton’s design process: every element is considered, reconsidered and considered again in constant pursuit of the most natural experience.  If we have done our job effectively, users should never make an incorrect action out of confusion or be left unable to figure out how to do something. Options should be clear and easy, even if the labor necessary to develop them is neither.

-Casey Ayers